They want to go back to the state of having to feel like you need to gear an alternate character up through the older raids, much like in TBC, etc - there is catchup mechanics (VP, LFR) but they're both heavily dependant on a capped resource (meaning you will only ever get so many pieces in a set amount of time), or RNG (LFR loot).
Nerfing the old raids by 10% doesn't neccessarely mean that the raids become aviable to a bigger part of the raiding base as such, but it does allow for "easier" gearing of alts who might be undergeared, and people who can't play their alts as well as their main to succeed where they'd have failed due to lack of skill.

In all honesty, no proper raider should give one single damn about nerfing old content. You even have feats to show how good you are this time around, and they waited with the nerf till a new tier was released - thats better than the past two tiers were. A tier's worth of gear makes a damn hard boss literally faceroll (Garajal first reset it was aviable, anyone? Most brutal enrage check this tier IMO), so it's not like you retain any of the "difficulty" that was there when you first defeated the bosses, and you return a year later for god knows what reason - it's still going to be faceroll due to your shiny new gear. All the 10% buff does, is allow alt characters to be more easily geared up for 5.2 raids.

Do also mind that "usually", they nerf the raids by 20-30% (Firelands was a blanket 20% nerf AFAIK), while this time around, it's "only" a 10% nerf.

yes it is better than the past two tiers
no it is not normal to nerf old heroic content.

it is heroic content. the nerf comes naturally with you having higher levels of gear from newer raids. there is absolutely no need for a blanket nerf that devaluates content even more than it is already from natural decay.

Do you really feel like you beat the heroic version of the encounter when you walk into a 10% reduced boss while overgearing by 15-20 ilvls ? (hint: no)

yes it is better than the past two tiers
no it is not normal to nerf old heroic content.

it is heroic content. the nerf comes naturally with you having higher levels of gear from newer raids. there is absolutely no need for a blanket nerf that devaluates content even more than it is already from natural decay.

Do you really feel like you beat the heroic version of the encounter when you walk into a 10% reduced boss while overgearing by 15-20 ilvls ? (hint: no)

Do you really feel like you killed a heroic boss when you're overgearing it by 15-20 item levels *right now*? (hint: no). May I remind you that you are currently sitting at 9/16 heroic, in item level gear that is the same as the majority of my raid (save the one or two über lucky bastards who had sick coinrolls) had when we killed Sha of Fear the first time? And we're not even that good, we're only barely in the top 100.

But once again - it doesn't matter. No one gives a damn about old content but bleeding hearts who wants their experience to feel "real". Hint hint - it isn't. You're already overgearing the content as-is. Why do you care that content that you're not going to be doing on your main character is nerfed, so people can gear up their alternate characters without struggling to find people skilled enough to clear a decent amount of heroic modes?

It is more normal to nerf heroic content than not. We have had:
Ulduar with hardmodes.
TOTGC with heroic modes.
ICC with heroic modes.
T11 with heroic modes.
Firelands with heroic modes.
Dragon soul with heroic modes.
Ulduar was not nerfed apart from "balance" fixes.
Totgc was not nerfed apart from "balance" fixes.
Icc was nerfed.
T11 was not nerfed apart from "balance" fixes (although pretty much every single boss got a "balance" fix over the duration of the tier, making them significantly easier than their first versions - magmaw kiting constructs, omnotron hp reduced, chim fued back to back, maloriak black phase, atramedes and his twenty different exploits, nefarians' MC damage, halfus smite cheese, V+T guardian spirit cheese, Ascendant council didn't want no melee, Cho'gall HP nerf, Sinestra Wrack / cutter fix, Conclave wind burst grace period, and al'akir lightning fix. Yea, that's every single boss, huh). But even though they all recieved heavy nerfs, I'll put this as "not nerfed".
Firelands was nerfed.
Dragon soul was nerfed.

Guess what? That's Ulduar, where the hardmode system was first being TESTED that didn't get a blanket nerf, that's TOTC where you could run 4 instances per week due to further TESTING of the system (meaning you got gear at twice the rate you normally would due to both norm+heroic clear) that wasn't nerfed, ICC that was (argueably the first time they used the current heroic mode system), T11 that kinda was/wasn't, and firelands + dragon soul that was.
3v3. That's 50%, in favor of the "heroics DO get nerfed" counting T11. You're saying it's not normal? It's been more likely than not.

All in all, if you're annoyed that you can't get the content down before it sees nerfs, then all I can say is, join a better guild or have your guild focus more on progress. Pre-nerf heroic modes isn't for everyone. If Blizzard feels that half a year is enough to get them down before they nerf them (may I remind you that this is WAY fucking longer than they have ever left the instances untouched before?), then so be it. Won't lose any sleep over it, and I don't see what the big fuzz is.

All in all, if you're annoyed that you can't get the content down before it sees nerfs, then all I can say is, join a better guild or have your guild focus more on progress. Pre-nerf heroic modes isn't for everyone. If Blizzard feels that half a year is enough to get them down before they nerf them (may I remind you that this is WAY fucking longer than they have ever left the instances untouched before?), then so be it. Won't lose any sleep over it, and I don't see what the big fuzz is.

hmmm no one made the point of downing current content and about current raid difficulty did they? nor did i try and insinuate i was the most epic raider ever. But you went on trying to pretend i did - way to waste your time !

To resume what you are saying in first paragraph :
Content is already super easy, and I (Eiffel) am rubbish compared to the best players in the world (you).

To resume your second paragraph :
No one cares about old content (i kind of doubt that. Maybe true for you, but you're such a special snowflake....)

After that, idk wtf you are saying, i think trying to say 3 tiers were nerfed and three weren't ... I don't see how that's relevant to anything. Unless you think they had the best solutions in the past.

The discussion is not about current content, and not being able to get it down. I am really not sure where you got that from. The discussion is about why the need to nerf content that is already nerfed by the fact we get higher ilvl loot from other instances. You reinforced that, by saying that the current content is already too easy. But then insist we shouldn't care about another nerf on top of that ? Then why not 50% ? Why not 80 % Fuck it, no one cares, right?

You say content is too easy in its current form - So why do you so vehemently oppose people who don't want to see it nerfed an extra notch? You are clearly stating it doesn't need a nerf, thus having exactly the same opinion as me: it is not needed.

But , you are butthurt that i get butthurt that this is happening ? dat logic.

My only gripe with some heroic raiders is when they want to make content harder on 90% of the population because they think everyone has the same viewpoint as they do. A lot of players can't eat, sleep and breathe WoW and frankly don't want to. Incredibly close-minded people. Most people who play WoW don't know or care who the world first guilds are, if you do, great. Most people don't.

Why are you concerned that people can do Heroic modes when the content is not current anymore? If you are as good as you say, you will be in Throne of Thunder and will not look back, anyway.

Also, all of these FoS will be gone by the time the nerfs are up. If you want to feel special, link all the Cutting Edge FoS that people will not be able to get anymore.

1. Never said i was good, or implied it. I implied i put in some hard work for the heroic kills. I said heroics needed to be hard, whether current or old content. It would give all people much more things to do. As an example, id love to be able to go back and do Firefighter at the difficulty level it was at at the time.

2. Really don't care about FoS. I care about downing a boss, and when you nerf everything 10%, well it doesn't feel like a kill. Or put it this way : it doesn't feel heroic anymore.

It's not about what I care about. It's about game design. Heroics are meant to be hard by design : keep them hard. Thats all there is to my argument.

hmmm no one made the point of downing current content and about current raid difficulty did they? nor did i try and insinuate i was the most epic raider ever. But you went on trying to pretend i did - way to waste your time !

You did.
You said that it doesn't feel like beating an encounter if you walk in there with 15-20 item levels more than the bosses were designed for, and a nerf on top of it was too much. Why do you not move up to a level of raiding where it feels like you beat a heroic boss, then? You raid 16 hours a week, so it's not a time-commitment issue. If you're so saddened that they have to nerf the bosses before you can beat the "original" form, move up instead of demand cathering to the very, very small demographic that is the "hardcore" raider who wants the "original" boss, but does not want to join a top 100 guild to get it.

To resume what you are saying in first paragraph :
Content is already super easy, and I (Eiffel) am rubbish compared to the best players in the world (you).

I never said that. I said that you're overgearing content by a vast difference to what players can beat the encounters with. I also never said that we were some of the best players, actually, if you take a look you'd see me saying that we're not even that good as we only barely break top 100. Method and Vodka and the likes did sha of fear in 10 item levels less than my guild did, too.

To resume your second paragraph :
No one cares about old content (i kind of doubt that. Maybe true for you, but you're such a special snowflake....)

I could say the same about you. If people cared about old content for a "challenge", we would have seen far more people running the (unnerfed, remember?) tier 11 during the lull of Dragon Soul. They didn't. You were lucky to get a run for the heroic modes, and if so, it was usually to prepare for an achivement run for the meta. All people cared about was the dragon-mount reward. No one cared about the actual content, or if it was nerfed or not. No one cared about Firelands, either. You never saw people stick their characters at 372/391 item level, and say "hey guys, know what? This is THE instance. I'm stopping here and finding 9/24 likeminded people, so we can raid this at its REAL difficulty".

After that, idk wtf you are saying, i think trying to say 3 tiers were nerfed and three weren't ... I don't see how that's relevant to anything. Unless you think they had the best solutions in the past.

So you lack reading comprehension skills, too.
You said that it is not "normal" to nerf heroic content (direct quote being: "no it is not normal to nerf old heroic content."I laid the 6 tiers we have had with "heroic modes" out for you, and proved that in 3 out of 6 instances, blanket nerfs were put out. Thus making it exactly as normal as "not" nerfing an "old" heroic tier. On top of that, the three tiers who were NOT nerfed, all had special circumstances regarding them:
One was the first tier of introducing Hardmodes, followed by an "extremely" easy loot pinata, that geared you up FOUR times as fast as any raid would do today, by killing less than half the amount of bosses.
One you could complete four times a week, for a massive boost in gear, compared to anything ever tried before.
One had nerfs all through the tier that made the bosses significantly easier than their original release versions ever were, and was in no need of a "blanket nerf" because of the gradual nerfs over time.

The discussion is not about current content, and not being able to get it down. I am really not sure where you got that from. The discussion is about why the need to nerf content that is already nerfed by the fact we get higher ilvl loot from other instances. You reinforced that, by saying that the current content is already too easy. But then insist we shouldn't care about another nerf on top of that ? Then why not 50% ? Why not 80 % Fuck it, no one cares, right?

Of course it's about current content and not being able to get it down. If you had cleared all 16 bosses on heroic and been farming them for weeks, or even months already, you wouldn't give the slightest damn about it being "nerfed" in a future patch, when there's a new raid. The only thing you come across as right now, is a player that's angry that he doesn't get to complete the raids before they have been nerfed, so you don't get to feel the "real" challenge.
I, once again, never said that current content were too easy.
And a 10% nerf is fine, because, as has been stated by Blizzard quite recently:

They want to go back to a model of raiding, where gearing up in previous content matter. In order to allow people to do so on characters that they are not as comfortable with as their mains, at a rate that would not see them a tier behind the curve due to the limited amount of time some people can play, the content needs a nerf. Anyone who feels like they need a challenge should already have completed it anyway, so it won't hurt anyone - and the players who can play an alt character to it's full potential are few and far between, which means that it'll feel as "hard" as it did on their main.

You say content is too easy in its current form - So why do you so vehemently oppose people who don't want to see it nerfed an extra notch? You are clearly stating it doesn't need a nerf, thus having exactly the same opinion as me: it is not needed.

For the third time - where do I say content is too easy in it's current form ? Feel free to quote me. Is it an assumption you make because I've already cleared every heroic mode that is aviable, I think the content is easy? I don't. The difficulty is quite nice as-is, but for some people it's a towering wall that won't allow you to pass - the 10% nerf will let those people gear up so they can enter normal modes of the next tier.

But , you are butthurt that i get butthurt that this is happening ? dat logic.

Your high horse is waiting outside btw.

I'm not butthurt. Sorry if you got that impression. You are, though, because you're the one that's mad that they "won't leave my special snowflake heroic modes alone so the unwashed masses can't complete the bosses that I have". Yes, that's what you sound like.

Give it up - no real raider gives a damn if T14 gets nerfed by 10%, but a big amount of people will enjoy being able to clear the content so they can move on to the next tier, and it'll give those of us who likes to play alt characters a chance of completing some of the more "difficult" encounters that we would otherwise not have the numbers to complete (because not everyone plays their alt to it's full potential), but do have the "skill" to do.

Also, who are you to dictate what the philosphy of "heroic" raids are? Blizzard clearly disagrees that they should stay "hard" after they become unrelevant.
I'd say what Blizzard is doing now is a VAST improvement over anything else they have done so far - nerfing the content when it no longer matters, instead of forcing the nerf on players and have them stick with that for a few months, till new challenges arise.

All in all, if you're annoyed that you can't get the content down before it sees nerfs, then all I can say is, join a better guild or have your guild focus more on progress. Pre-nerf heroic modes isn't for everyone. If Blizzard feels that half a year is enough to get them down before they nerf them (may I remind you that this is WAY fucking longer than they have ever left the instances untouched before?), then so be it. Won't lose any sleep over it, and I don't see what the big fuzz is.

One problem is that tier fourteen is apparently going to have been current content for a relatively short period of time. MSV opened October 2, 2012, HoF opened on October 30, and ToeS opened on November 13, and it looks like tier fifteen is headed for release in late February or early March. So tier fourteen will have been current content for between three and a half and five months, depending on the individual instance. That's really short for sixteen bosses. In comparison, tier eleven was current for six and a half months.

So at least some of the motivation behind all these anti-nerf comments is probably that people feel like their progression is being cut short. Obviously they're focusing on the wrong thing - the problem isn't the nerfs, it's the timing of the new raid - but at the same time I feel like there's more to the story than a bunch people whining "don't nerf my content bro."

One problem is that tier fourteen is apparently going to have been current content for a relatively short period of time. MSV opened October 2, 2012, HoF opened on October 30, and ToeS opened on November 13, and it looks like tier fifteen is headed for release in late February or early March. So tier fourteen will have been current content for between three and a half and five months, depending on the individual instance. That's really short for sixteen bosses. In comparison, tier eleven was current for six and a half months.

So at least some of the motivation behind all these anti-nerf comments is probably that people feel like their progression is being cut short. Obviously they're focusing on the wrong thing - the problem isn't the nerfs, it's the timing of the new raid - but at the same time I feel like there's more to the story than a bunch people whining "don't nerf my content bro."

Late february early march is way off. Add another month to that. Your approx means that in 3 weeks, they need to test the remaining 10 man normal bosses, 25 man normal bosses, 10+25 heroic bosses, tune classes (they stated that they hadn't really begun to tweak DPS yet), and test the new forge-thing that's supposed to make us raid-worthy weapons. Late april, early march is a much better approximate, considering the above factors.

One thing that I'd like to remind you, is that five months is a LONG time before they even touch the encounters - consider Dragon Soul, where you could kill the first heroic boss the 7th december, and the 5% nerf was activated the 31th of january - there's two months between the release and the first gradual nerf. They left these bosses untouched for more than double that. And contrary to dragon soul, these bosses all have a gradual upwards curve in terms of difficulty - not just "faceroll, faceroll, faceroll, faceroll, dps check, stand in / dont stand in check, wall/classstacking, faceroll".
Firelands opened in the start of july, and had an instant 20% nerf to everything put into place halfway through september - one and a half month.
ICC in all of this is a "Bad" example due to extremely heavy gating. But consider it for a moment - no guild downed the unnerfed Lich king untill they were in BiS gear and went back and turned the buff off, just to prove that they could. The first kill was at 5%. But consider the fact that the first sindragosa and putricide kill was done feb 11 and 12 respectively, and the 5% buff came out just two weeks later...

Giving us 4-5 months to do this tier without touching anything but glaring oversights/clear overtunes (garajal flower-power V2, Spirit kings and Zorlok RNG anyone?) is a godsend, and plenty of time for everyone to get everything down if they really want to see the unnerfed content.

Late february early march is way off. Add another month to that. Your approx means that in 3 weeks, they need to test the remaining 10 man normal bosses, 25 man normal bosses, 10+25 heroic bosses, tune classes (they stated that they hadn't really begun to tweak DPS yet), and test the new forge-thing that's supposed to make us raid-worthy weapons. Late april, early march is a much better approximate, considering the above factors.

One thing that I'd like to remind you, is that five months is a LONG time before they even touch the encounters - consider Dragon Soul, where you could kill the first heroic boss the 7th december, and the 5% nerf was activated the 31th of january - there's two months between the release and the first gradual nerf. They left these bosses untouched for more than double that. And contrary to dragon soul, these bosses all have a gradual upwards curve in terms of difficulty - not just "faceroll, faceroll, faceroll, faceroll, dps check, stand in / dont stand in check, wall/classstacking, faceroll".
Firelands opened in the start of july, and had an instant 20% nerf to everything put into place halfway through september - one and a half month.
ICC in all of this is a "Bad" example due to extremely heavy gating. But consider it for a moment - no guild downed the unnerfed Lich king untill they were in BiS gear and went back and turned the buff off, just to prove that they could. The first kill was at 5%. But consider the fact that the first sindragosa and putricide kill was done feb 11 and 12 respectively, and the 5% buff came out just two weeks later...

Giving us 4-5 months to do this tier without touching anything but glaring oversights/clear overtunes (garajal flower-power V2, Spirit kings and Zorlok RNG anyone?) is a godsend, and plenty of time for everyone to get everything down if they really want to see the unnerfed content.

We'll see about the time predictions, I'll be happy if I'm wrong. I think a late March/early April release would be reasonable. There isn't a clear point where everyone who really wants to has downed the content, but I don't think we're there yet.

Not really sure where you're going on the discussion of nerfs, as I agree with you on the complaints about nerfs. What I think matters is killing the content before a new raid tier cuts progression short.

Neither set of achieves will be obtainable ever again after 5.2. One set is for clearing the instances on normal before 5.2, the other is for clearing the instances on heroic before 5.2.

So apparently the achievement USED to say " Defeat the Will of the Emperor in Mogu'shan Vaults on Normal difficulty, before the discovery of the Throne of Thunder."

Now the achievement states "Defeat the Will of the Emperor in Mogu'shan Vaults on Heroic difficulty, with the Dampening Field inactive or disabled."

This is highly suspect that Blizz intends on keeping these FoS achieves available AFTER 5.2 is released. Does anyone have any confirmation of this from Blizz? Are they going back on their initial decision to make these only obtainable prior to the patch release?

I can only assume they would do this because they know they gimped us on such a short period of time for 16 HC bosses to be cleared by more than 1% of the player base.

On live(patch 5.1) it says "Defeat the Will of the Emperor in Mogu'shan Vaults on Heroic difficulty, with the Dampening Field inactive or disabled."
On PTR it says " Defeat the Will of the Emperor in Mogu'shan Vaults on Heroic difficulty, before the discovery of the Throne of Thunder."

On live(patch 5.1) it says "Defeat the Will of the Emperor in Mogu'shan Vaults on Heroic difficulty, with the Dampening Field inactive or disabled."
On PTR it says " Defeat the Will of the Emperor in Mogu'shan Vaults on Heroic difficulty, before the discovery of the Throne of Thunder."

Do you really feel like you killed a heroic boss when you're overgearing it by 15-20 item levels *right now*? (hint: no). May I remind you that you are currently sitting at 9/16 heroic, in item level gear that is the same as the majority of my raid (save the one or two über lucky bastards who had sick coinrolls) had when we killed Sha of Fear the first time? And we're not even that good, we're only barely in the top 100.

But once again - it doesn't matter. No one gives a damn about old content but bleeding hearts who wants their experience to feel "real". Hint hint - it isn't. You're already overgearing the content as-is. Why do you care that content that you're not going to be doing on your main character is nerfed, so people can gear up their alternate characters without struggling to find people skilled enough to clear a decent amount of heroic modes?

It is more normal to nerf heroic content than not. We have had:
Ulduar with hardmodes.
TOTGC with heroic modes.
ICC with heroic modes.
T11 with heroic modes.
Firelands with heroic modes.
Dragon soul with heroic modes.
Ulduar was not nerfed apart from "balance" fixes.
Totgc was not nerfed apart from "balance" fixes.
Icc was nerfed.

Ulduar had a balance fix and then about 1 month later heavier nerfs hit which also effected hard modes. This was the official start of Blizzard publicly nerfing raid content when new content was coming out.